09/18/2026
I haven’t been posting here much (March 2026 was the last time 🫣🫠) but I have been thinking about our plans for 2027.
We will continue to be breeding towards our Catskill Homesteader goals, but what we offer to the public will be changing.
The original goal of the Catskill Homesteaders was to produce winter hardy, “eye candy” dual purpose, foraging chickens laying a rainbow variety of eggs, broodies encouraged. We have been working on a better “description” with specific breed characteristic goals, but that’s still a rough draft. But basically, the goal being to “bar” everything, that is, introduce the barring genetics for the purpose of using it as an eventual autosexing trait. (Can tell gender at hatch and they breed true.) As such, certain feather patterns and colors will be eventually eliminated from our breeding program that don’t have the right genetics for this.
Gold and silver duckwing base patterns being the ideal with barring, similar to Legbars, Welbar’s, Bielefelders, etc. Some of the “in between” phases will produce “Crele” patterned chickens.
I prefer smaller combs and wattles, to reduce frostbite risk in the winter, but currently working with a lot of single combed chickens, so that will be a continued long term goal.
I like crests and beards/muffs, so those traits will be kept in some lines.
Egg color diversity will be kept by having separate breeding groups for certain egg colors and/or separation at hatch. However, chocolate/ dark brown eggs will be less likely as Black Copper Marans will no longer be used in breeding forward.
Unfortunately we ended up with a Mareks positive flock this year ( only tested a few chickens but due to similar symptoms in our 2026 grow outs, it’s spread amongst the flocks). So, no started pullets or adults will be available for others, unless you already have a Mareks positive flock and understand the risks. (I will be working on a full disclosure document for potential customers.)
All future chicks will be vaccinated for Mareks, but this won’t prevent them from getting exposed or being carriers if they have contact with other MDV positive or other carriers. So they ideally need to be rehomed asap after hatching.
Hatching eggs will be sanitized to prevent a slight risk of infected dander on the egg shells. I will likely test how it affects the hatch rate before making a decision about offering hatching eggs or not.
The hope is that once all our breeding flock is vaccinated (1-2 years out) and we have time to build new grow out pens with better biosecurity measures, culling for weakness and symptoms, we’ll have better flocks with more immunity.
